Within the field of the packaging industry, immense and constantly increasing quantities of consumer packages of the single-use type (so-called disposable cartons) are produced annually. The material in these packages varies depending upon which type of product is to be packed, but most of these packages generally consist of a plurality of layers laminated to one another which are intended together to impart to the package the desired superior product protection properties. For liquid foods, use is usually made of a packaging material composed of plastic layers and paper or cardboard layers, this material being, particularly in the case of oxidation and bacteria sensitive foods, optionally complemented with at least one additional layer of metal (eg. aluminium foil) or other material with the desired barrier properties. Thus, one prior art packaging material for, for instance, milk consists of an inner rigidifying base layer of paper or cardboard and outer liquid-tight layers of plastic, while a corresponding packaging material for juice and other particularly oxidation and/or bacteria sensitive foods may additionally be provided with an aluminium foil disposed between the above-mentioned layers.
Concurrently with the growing production output of single-use packages, the amount of waste produced will naturally enough increase as well, this laminated packaging material waste including both domestic refuse (used whole cartons) and industrial waste (rejects of incorrectly produced packages and other production waste). The term "laminated packaging material waste" is therefore taken to signify all waste consisting of laminated packaging material, irrespective of the stage in the chain of distribution of the packages from which this waste derives.
Since the waste contains valuable and also--for all intents and purposes--pure material components such as plastic, metal (aluminium foil) and paper or cardboard which separately, but to an even greater degree severally constitute a major economic resource, it has always been desirable in the art to be able to recover, in the best possible way and to as great an extent as possible, the economic potential represented in the waste. This problem has recently been given even more prominence as a result of more stringent governmental requirements on waste management.